Anti-Muslim law enforcement trainer cited by Norway killer rakes in U.S. taxpayer cash

The U.S. government has strongly denounced the recent massacre by a right-wing extremist in Norway, which killed at least 76 people.  But at the same time, sectors of the U.S. government have paid an anti-Muslim activist who helped fuel Anders Behring Breivik’s twisted ideology.  Breivik has admitted to being behind the massacre in Norway.

The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer writes:

Walid Shoebat, a “terrorism expert” with a dubious background who was paid by the U.S. government to train law enforcement in counterterrorism, is frequently cited in the manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the alleged right-wing terrorist who is accused of killing more than 90 people in Oslo last week. Brevik cites Shoebat more than 15 times.

Brevik cites Shoebat to support his arguments that immigration from Muslim countries threatens the West. “This is why the face of Islamic fundamentalism in the West has a façade that Islam is a peaceful religion,” Brevik cites Shoebat as saying, “Because they are waiting to have more Islamic immigrants, they are waiting to increase in number, waiting to increase their political power.”

As I reported here, Shoebat, the subject of a recent CNN report that debunks his purported life story as a former Palestinian terrorist, rakes in U.S. taxpayer cash.

Two months ago, Shoebat delivered a keynote address to law enforcement officers attending a South Dakota conference on homeland security.  Shoebat was paid $5,000 for the appearance by the South Dakota Office of Homeland Security–the money coming a federal grant administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

At a similar counter-terrorism event held last year in Las Vegas, Shoebat reportedly told the audience that the way to solve the threat of Islamic extremism was to “kill them…including the children.”

Shoebat is one of many anti-Muslim activists from the United States cited in Breivik’s online manifesto.  It’s a disturbing reality that Shoebat’s views on Islam are being funded with federal grants and listened to by law enforcement agencies in the U.S. The revelation that Breivik’s manifesto is laced with citations of Shoebat should be a wake-up call to the U.S. government that Shoebat, and others like him, have no place training law enforcement officers, and should certainly not be taking money from U.S. taxpayers.

Breivik manifesto outlines virulent right-wing ideology that fueled Norway massacre

A detailed manifesto reportedly written by the alleged perpetrator behind the Norway massacre was posted on the web yesterday by an American blogger.
Titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” it sheds significant light on the virulent and extreme right-wing, anti-Islam and anti-immigrant ideology which appears to have fueled Anders Behring Breivik’s murder of over 90 people on Friday.

As the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah notes:

Anders Behring Breivik saw himself as a holy warrior and crusader engaged in a war against a “Marxist-Islamist alliance” that he feared would take over Europe if not stopped. He hoped by his actions to inspire “thousands” to follow in his path. He described himself as a “martyr” and “resistance fighter.”

He described members of Norway’s Labour Party as “traitors” because of their alleged support of “multiculturalism and Islamisation.” Behring advocated “terror” attacks on mosques, especially during Muslim relgious holidays.

This is according to a 1,500 page manuscript Breivik himself wrote. Norway’s public broadcaster NRK reported on the manuscript and that Breivik had admitted to writing and disseminating it (Google translation of NRK report).

In addition, the manuscript provides a more detailed look at how Breivik’s strong support for extremist Israeli policies fits into his worldview.  Professed throughout the manifesto is a motif of unwavering support for Israel–a key component of Breivik and his ilk’s ideology–in addition to  support for the mass deportations of Arabs and Muslims from Israel/Palestine.  Here are some examples taken from an English translation of the manuscript written by Breivik:

Let’s end the stupid support for the Palestinians that the Eurabians have encouraged, and start supporting our cultural cousin, Israel…(page 338)

I believe Europe should strive for:

A cultural conservative approach where monoculturalism, moral, the nuclear family, a free market, support for Israel and our Christian cousins of the east, law and order and Christendom itself must be central aspects (unlike now). Islam must be re-classified as a political ideology and the Quran and the Hadith banned as the genocidal political tools they are…(page 661)

As part of a “draft” for a so-called “European Declaration of Independence,” Breivik also writes:

A public statement in support of Israel against Muslim aggression should be issued, and the money that has previously been awarded to Palestinians should be allocated partly to Israel’s defence, partly to establish a Global Infidel Defence Fund with the stated goal of disseminating information about Muslim persecution of non-Muslims worldwide

Max Blumenthal succintly explains here why Israel occupies such a central role in the Islamophobic far-right’s imagination:

While in many ways Breivik shares core similarities with other right-wing anti-government terrorists, he is the product of a movement that is relatively new, increasingly dangerous, and poorly understood. I described the movement in detail in my “Axis of Islamophobia” piece, noting its simultaneous projection of anti-Semitic themes on Muslim immigrants and the appeal of Israel as a Fort Apache on the front lines of the war on terror, holding the line against the Eastern barbarian hordes. Breivik’s writings embody this seemingly novel fusion, particularly in his obsession with “Cultural Marxism,” an increasingly popular far-right concept that positions the (mostly Jewish) Frankfurt School as the originators of multiculturalism, combined with his call to “influence other cultural conservatives to come to our…pro-Israel line.”

Breivik and other members of Europe’s new extreme right are fixated on the fear of the “demographic Jihad,” or being out-populated by overly fertile Muslim immigrants. They see themselves as Crusader warriors fighting a racial/religious holy war to preserve Western Civilization. Thus they turn for inspiration to Israel, the only ethnocracy in the world, a country that substantially bases its policies towards the Palestinians on what its leaders call “demographic considerations.” This is why Israeli flags invariably fly above black-masked English Defense League mobs, and why Geert Wilders, the most prominent Islamophobic politician in the world, routinely travels to Israel to demand the forced transfer of Palestinians.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency also picks up the story in an article today, “Norway killer espoused new right-wing, pro-Israel philosophy”:

The confessed perpetrator in the terror attack in Norway espoused a new right-wing philosophy allied with Israel against Islam – a trend in European populist and far-right movements that has Israel worried…

European right-populist parties increasingly have been waving the flag of friendship with Israel. Last month, after it emerged that German-Swedish far-right politician Patrik Brinkmann had met in Berlin with Israeli Likud lawmaker Ayoub Kara, deputy minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Kara be prevented from making further trips abroad.

According to Ynet, Lieberman accused Kara of meeting with neo-Nazis and causing damage to Israel’s image. Brinkman said he had reached out to Israeli rightists hoping to build a coalition against Islam

There are supporters of Israel who refuse to acknowledge the central role right-wing Zionism plays in the current attempt to gin up anti-Muslim sentiment.  But the actions and words of Breivik, and those from whom he drew inspiration, make clear that it is imperative to acknowledge, understand and combat what Blumenthal aptly calls the “axis of Islamophobia.”

 

The Norway massacre and the nexus of Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss, and was also picked up by AlterNet.

Details on the culprit behind yesterday’s massacre in Norway, which saw car bombings in Oslo and a mass shooting attack on the island of Utoya that caused the deaths of at least 91 people, have begun to emerge.  While it is still too early for a complete portrait of the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, there are enough details to begin to piece together what’s behind the attack.

Although initial media reports, spurred on by the tweets of former State Department adviser on violent extremism Will McCants, linked the attacks to Islamist extremists, it was in fact an anti-Muslim zealot who committed the murders.  An examination of Breivik’s views, and his support for far-right European political movements, makes it clear that only by interrogating the nexus of Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism can one understand the political beliefs behind the terrorist attack.

Breivik is apparently an avid fan of U.S.-based anti-Muslim activists such as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes, and has repeatedly professed his ardent support for Israel.  Breivik’s political ideology is illuminated by looking at comments he posted to the right-wing site document.no, which author and journalist Doug Sanders put up.

Here’s a sampling of some of Breivik’s comments:

Anti-Muslim bigot Walid Shoebat, brought to you by U.S. taxpayers

Late last year, Walid Shoebat, a self-styled “expert” on Islamic extremism, reportedly told public safety personnel attending a Las Vegas anti-terrorism conference that the way to solve the threat posed by terrorists was to “kill them…including the children.” 

And on May 11, despite criticism of the Las Vegas speech, Shoebat, who continues to tout his credentials as an “ex-terrorist” in the Palestine Liberation Organization despite serious questions about his purported biography, was welcomed to a similar place.  He delivered a keynote address to more public employees who attended the second annual South Dakota Homeland Security Conference held in Rapid City–a conference entirely funded by federal tax money.  The topic was “Jihad in America.”

David Montgomery of the Rapid City Journal reported on the speech:

Walid Shoebat, who says he was a former terrorist in the Palestine Liberation Organization before converting to Christianity, said that Americans should focus on what he called the “culture of terrorism” among Muslims rather than “only the ones who carry out the explosive act.”

Shoebat said closet supporters of terrorism exist throughout the Muslim community in mosques, community groups and in the U.S. armed forces.
“You’ve been infiltrated at all levels,” Shoebat said. “Are all Muslims who interpret for the U.S. military terrorists? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean you play Russian roulette.”

Shoebat’s appearance was paid for by a federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security as part of the second annual South Dakota Homeland Security Conference. He also spoke at the first conference last year in Sioux Falls.

Shoebat was invited for a second time to the conference because the speech was highly popular among attendees, Jim Carpenter, the state’s director of homeland security, told Montgomery.  “The critiques and evaluations that came back highly recommended that he come back again…We acted on those, and that’s why he came back.”
 
But even more alarmingly, Shoebat, described by religion writer Richard Bartholomew as “a pseudo-expert on terrorism…[who] teaches that Obama is a secret Muslim and that the Bible has prophesised a Muslim anti-Christ,” is only the tip of an anti-Muslim iceberg being funded by taxpayers.  Author and journalist Chris Hedges recently reported that “much of this [anti-Muslim] indoctrination within the law enforcement community is funded under two grant programs for training—the State Homeland Security Program and Urban Areas Security Initiative—which made $1.67 billion available to states in 2010.”

Since September 11, the federal government has poured money into fighting terrorism.  But some of this money has gone to pay for public employee attendance at seminars and trainings that feature crude propaganda about Islam.  The speakers at these trainings, like Shoebat, also often push a far-right agenda when it comes to the Israel/Palestine conflict.  For example, on his website, Shoebat claims that “the Arab refugees are being used as pawns’ to create a terror breeding ground, as a form of aggression against Israel.”

Shoebat and others like him preach bigoted tropes about Islam across the country at similar conferences paid for with taxpayer money.  The trend has continued despite more public scrutiny in the form of investigations published by the Washington Post and a March 29 letter from top senators in the Senate’s Homeland Security committee.  The letter, authored by Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, expressed concern about “state and local law enforcement agencies…being trained by individuals who not only do not understand the ideology of violent Islamist extremism but also cast aspersions on a wide swath of ordinary Americans merely because of their religious affiliation.”

The Senate letter came after the publication of a comprehensive report by the Political Research Associates that documented how “public servants are regularly presented with misleading, inflammatory, and dangerous information about the nature of the terror threat.”

“What we are documenting here is the institutionalization of these views in a critical part of our government—those who have the power to monitor, extract, arrest and interrogate people,” Thom Cincotta, the author of the report, told me in a recent interview published in AlterNet.  “This isn’t the type of country we want to be.  We want to embrace our diversity and build ties with the Muslim-American community.” 

But despite the increase in public scrutiny, and demands from the Council on American-Islamic Relations  to drop Shoebat from the South Dakota conference, the Shoebat show went on.

The scrutiny of Shoebat was met with a shrug from Carpenter, the state’s director of homeland security.  He told the Rapid City Journal that he doesn’t think that “we should be complacent in any way…Sometimes it takes folks to wake us up a little bit.”  But in reality, Shoebat and others like him let law enforcement go to sleep on the real work of counter-terrorism.

Antiwar Radio’s Scott Horton interviews me on ‘How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims’

I was on Scott Horton’s show on Antiwar Radio last week.  The MP3 of the interview is here, or you can stream it here.  Here’s the Antiwar.com description of the interview:

Alex Kane, frequent contributor to the blog Mondoweiss, discusses his article “How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims;” the Islamophobes “training” law enforcement agencies that Muslims are their enemies, Islam is a terrorist religion and Sharia law is coming to take over the US; the questionable involvement of local cops in fighting terrorism, which is essentially a foreign policy problem; Israel’s interest in perpetuating a negative view of Muslims and Arabs; and how the US government shows more allegiance to Israel than its own Muslim citizens – the consequence of a foreign policy that is unwaveringly supportive of Israel.

How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims

This article appeared in AlterNet today, where you can read the whole piece.  Here’s an excerpt:

The decade after the 9/11 attacks has seen the creation of a profitable cottage industry of self-styled “experts” on Islam. As Sarah Posner recently noted in an article on Religion Dispatches, anti-Muslim fear-mongers, ranging from politicians to national security experts, have “cultivated awide-ranging conspiracy theory that totalitarian Islamic radicals are bent on infiltrating America, displacing the Constitution, and subverting Western-style democracy in the U.S. and around the globe.”

What hasn’t gotten a comprehensive look, at least until now, is how public tax dollars have been funding parts of this industry under the guise of counter-terrorism trainings for city and state law enforcement across the country, which after 9/11 has gotten heavily involved in fighting terrorism.

A recently released report by the Political Research Associates, a group that monitors the right in America, puts the spotlight on how “public servants are regularly presented with misleading, inflammatory, and dangerous information about the nature of the terror threat.” The report, titled, “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace:  Private Firms, Public Servants, and the Threat to Rights and Security,” examines frames—like “Islam is a terrorist religion,” or “mainstream Muslim-Americans have terrorist ties”—and how they are propagated to law enforcement officers.

These trainings have caught the eye of Senator Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security committee, and Senator Susan Collins, a ranking member. A March 29 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano from the senators reads, in part:  “We are concerned with recent reports that state and local law enforcement agencies are being trained by individuals who not only do not understand the ideology of violent Islamist extremism but also cast aspersions on a wide swath of ordinary Americans merely because of their religious affiliation.”

The letter asks the attorney general to provide a list of grant programs being used to fund counter-terrorism trainings and asks about “improved oversight” of these trainings—demands that mirror the recommendations made in the Political Research Associates’ publication.

AlterNet recently caught up with Thom Cincotta, the author of the report and a Political Research Associates’ staff member, to delve into more detail on this subset of the anti-Muslim cottage industry.

Alex Kane: How did this project come to be?

Thom Cincotta: At the Political Research Associates, we have been, for the past two years, looking at the growth of the domestic security apparatus, particularly how local police have been mobilized to fight terrorism—specifically in new forms of collaborative bodies like intelligence fusion centers and Joint Terrorism Task Forces. This mobilization represents a tremendous, unprecedented growth of our domestic intelligence apparatus, and with the new powers, capabilities and resources at the hands of that bureaucracy, there are risks for our civil liberties.

In examining that infrastructure, we have had an eye out for opportunities for the politicization of intelligence-type policing, and during the course of our investigation into fusion centers, we noticed some courses being offered at the local level. Specifically, in Massachusetts, we noticed that one company called Security Solutions International in May 2009 was offering a seminar on the “radical jihadist threat” that was hosted by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The description of that course included things like the “legal wing of jihad in America,” and that right away set off red flags that this course content might not simply be looking at detecting valid terrorism.

Read the whole piece here.

Jewish left continues to take on the Simon Wiesenthal Center

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

Protesters outside the Simon Wiesenthal Center in New York City. (Photo: Bud Korotzer)

A coalition of progressive Jewish organizations on both coasts yesterday slammed the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s honoring of the civil rights-era Freedom Riders while “engaging in anti-Muslim bigotry that is no less destructive than that against which the Freedom Riders protested,” as Alan Levine, a New York activist and civil rights lawyer who worked in Mississippi in 1964 and 1965, put it in a press statement.

Simultaneously, Jewish peace groups, Palestine solidarity groups and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California held a protest against the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The central demand of the protests was for the center, which runs the Museum of Tolerance, to be “a voice for justice on behalf of the Muslim community,” instead of a voice disrespecting Muslims.

It was the latest action to try and turn the heat up on the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which came out against the Park 51 Muslim community center and is building a Jerusalem branch of its Museum of Tolerance on top of a historic Muslim cemetery.

Jews Against Islamophobia, a coalition consisting of Jews Say No!, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and American Jews for a Just Peace, has targeted the Simon Wiesenthal Center since mid-September. The coalition has conducted frequent demonstrations outside the Museum of Tolerance, holding up signs calling out the center’s “hypocrisy” and passing out flyers to passer-bys and those going into the museum.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, appeared on Fox News last August to say that the location of the proposed center, known as Park 51, was “insensitive.” The executive director of the center, which describes itself as a Jewish organization that “promotes human rights and dignity,” expressed similar sentiments to Crain’s New York Business.

The protests highlight the split within the American Jewish community over Park 51 and Islamophobia. For instance, Marc Tracy of Tablet pointed out last August that “out of the [Marist] pool of registered New York City voters, only 20 percent of Jews approve of the center, while 71 percent oppose it.”

In interviews, members of the coalition say their aim is to highlight alternative Jewish voices against Islamophobia and in support of the Park 51 project as well as attempt to pressure the center to reverse what they say is a hypocritical position. “As much as [mainstream Jewish organizations] want to marginalize others in the Jewish community, I think there are lots and lots of Jews who stand for the principles of justice together with other communities,” said Donna Nevel, a member of Jews Say No!

The coalition’s actions are meant to “let institutions such as the Wiesenthal Center know that they can’t get away with Islamophobic and anti-Arab racist comments and just assume that there’s not going to be any pushback,” said Jon Moscow, a leading member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a New York City-based social justice organization. Jewish groups’ opposition to Park 51 shows a “real misunderstanding of Jewish history in America, and to use the old phrase, ‘what’s good for the Jews,’” Moscow said.

In an emailed statement, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that “the issue is not the right to build the Islamic Center, but one of sensitivity by religious leaders to the suffering of innocents. The Simon Wiesenthal Center believes that the feelings of the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks are paramount.” The statement went on, saying, “if the families agree to the Islamic Center’s proposed location, fine; if they ask that it be moved, we would hope that the organizers would be sensitive to those feelings and move the location elsewhere in Manhattan.”

Those involved with Jews Against Islamophobia are also highlighting the connection between Islamophobia here and abroad by denouncing the Simon Wiesenthal Center for the building of a Museum of Tolerance on top of the Islamic Mamilla cemetery in Jerusalem. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has filed a petition with several international bodies to halt construction of the museum, says the project has resulted in the “disinterment of hundreds of graves.”

A three-part investigation by the Israeli daily Haaretz documented the building of the museum, reporting that “hundreds of skeletons that were buried in Jerusalem’s central Muslim cemetery over a period of some 1,000 years” were “cleared away from the site swiftly and clandestinely during five grueling months of nonstop work.”

Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, says that the Wiesenthal Center is using the word “tolerance as a fig leave, to engage in behavior that is anything but tolerant. There is a sort of fetishization of Jewish victim hood, but it doesn’t translate into identifying other forms of oppression, such as Islamophobia. In fact, by opposing Park 51, they are engaging in Islamophobia themselves.”

Vilkomerson says that given the history of discrimination against Jews in the U.S. and Jewish struggles in solidarity with other marginalized groups, the Jewish community should be standing firm against Islamophobia.

“It’s ‘never again’ for everyone, not just ‘never again’ for us. Therefore, its our responsibility to speak out when other groups are being targeted.”

It’s all about Israel: Why the Jewish establishment didn’t speak up about Peter King’s anti-Muslim hearings

There has been little objection from the mainstream Jewish establishment to Representative Peter King’s anti-Muslim hearings that took place yesterday, and some commentators are asking why.  Given the history of discrimination against Jews in the U.S., it should be an easy call to speak out against the McCarthy-like hearings that seek to demonize Muslim-Americans (laudably, J Street has spoken out, as well as, surprisingly, the Anti-Defamation League ).

But it should come as no surprise that the likes of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) have been silent about the March 10 hearings titled, “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” It all comes down to Israel.

Rep. King, for one, a Long Island Republican with a past of strong support for the Irish Republican Army, is a staunch advocate for Israel, making any potential criticism of him by mainstream Jewish organizations all the less likely.

Immediately after the Israeli naval attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla last May, which resulted in the deaths of nine activists, King introduced a House resolution to “prohibit United States participation on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and prohibit contributions to the United Nations for the purpose of paying for any United Nations investigation into the flotilla incident.”

On his website, King proclaims that he has “consistently voted in favor of military and economic aid packages benefiting Israel and sponsored legislation that prohibits direct assistance to Palestinian Government entities associated with Hamas or other terrorist organizations.”

In return for his “Israel can do no wrong” attitude, King rakes in the dough; according to Open Secrets, over $100,000 in pro-Israel contributions have been deposited in King’s campaign war chest between 1998 and 2010.

And then there’s the larger issue of the Israel lobby turning a blind eye to Islamophobia, or actively aiding it, in service of their larger political goal:  unquestioning support for anything Israel does.  These hearings do nothing more than give Islamophobia more mainstream credibility in the United States, something that even the Anti-Defamation League, the AJC and others have no problem with, as demonstrated by these organization’s shameful positions when the furor over Park 51 occurred last summer.

Maintaining blind support for Israel in the United States requires the demonization of Muslims and Arabs, and contributes to the narrative, pushed by neoconservatives, that Israel is the West’s bulwark against Islamist extremism.  As Scott McConnell, the founding editor of the American Conservative magazine, put it, “it is hard to miss that anti-Muslim bigotry is becoming embedded in American political culture, and Israel and its supporters are playing a substantial role in generating it.”

M.J. Rosenberg, a liberal blogger and former staffer at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, made this point succinctly in an interview I conducted a couple of months back.  Islamophobia “is tactical bigotry to weaken the voices of Arab-Americans and friends of Arab-
Americans when it comes to Israel/Palestinian issues,” he said.

Establishment groups are “just trying to protect AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby’s political power. In other words, if you discredit every Arab group by saying they’re extremist or ‘pro-terror,’ then who’s ever going to stand up to the lobby on Capitol Hill?”

So there shouldn’t be any astonishment at the deafening silence from the mainstream Jewish establishment on these hearings.  If there was dissent, that would be news.

U.S. funded Israeli-linked security company pushes anti-Muslim ideology

As Representative Peter King’s hearings on “Muslim radicalization” refocus attention on Islamophobia, a new report sheds light on the  network of private security firms tapping into public funds that push an anti-Muslim agenda to law enforcement agencies.

An organization called Security Solutions International (SSI) is one focus of the Political Research Associates’ report (pdf) , titled “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace:  Private Firms, Public Servants, & the Threat to Rights and Security.”

SSI “trades on the reputation of Israeli counterterrorism expertise by using Israeli veterans as trainers.”

This is the ideology that SSI, which “taps into public funds for its trainings,” promotes, according to the report:

Following civil liberties advocates’ criticism of SSI’s courses on “Radical Islamic Culture” in 2008, SSI intensified its promotions for the course. SSI Chief Executive Officer Solomon Bradman responded to criticism by saying, “I can’t take the responsibility of my course linking their religion [Islam] to terrorism. I think their religion got linked to terrorism a long time ago.”56 SSI planned to expand the reach of its “Islamic Jihadist Threat” seminar, holding it in even more venues, including Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington, DC, Dallas, Kansas, and Boston…

The Counter Terrorist’s coverage [, an SSI publication,] includes infrastructure protection, school shooting threat assessments, intelligence gathering and what SSI calls “the Radical Islamic Threat.” Articles like “U.S. Prison Recruitment for Jihad”—a piece by M. Zuhdi Jasser and Raphael Shore, founder of the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit organization “that aims to alert Americans about the real threat of Radical Islam”—reinforce an image of Muslims as menacing militant fundamentalists. The magazine’s regular inclusion of such articles allows the publication to function as a credentialed law enforcement outlet for authors who exaggerate and distort terrorist threats.

The report also notes other instances where a far-right pro-Israel agenda has been promoted hand-in-hand with Islamophobia.

Here’s the bottom line the report gives on support for Israel and Islamophobia:

Islamophobic story lines characterize the widespread support for Palestinian statehood and opposition to the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands among Muslim-American leaders as evidence of sympathy for terrorism.

The report is further evidence of Scott McConnell’s observation “that anti-Muslim bigotry is becoming embedded in American political culture, and Israel and its supporters are playing a substantial role in generating it.”

 

 

 

Far-right Jewish white supremacist authors Tennessee anti-Islam bill

The wave of Islamophobia continues to spread across the United States, as a Tennessee bill now on the table would make “following the Islamic code known as Shariah law a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail.”  The author behind this bill, one of 15 similar pieces of legislation being considered in states around the U.S., is a notorious, far-right figure:  David Yerushalmi.

Mother Jones‘ Tim Murphy has the story:

Yerushalmi, a lawyer, is the founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which has been called a “hate group” by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). His draft legislation served as the foundation for the Tennessee bill, and at least half a dozen other anti-Islam measures—including two bills that were signed into law last year in Louisiana and Tennessee.

With the exception of SB 1028, much of Yerushalmi’s legislation sounds pretty innocuous: State courts are prohibited from considering any foreign law that doesn’t fully honor the rights enshrined in the US and state constitutions. Because a Taliban-style interpretation of Islamic law is unheard of in the United States, the law’s impact is non-existent at best. But critics of some of the proposed bills have argued they could have far-reaching and unintended consequences, like undoing anti-kidnapping statutes, and hindering the ability of local companies to enter into contracts overseas.

But Tennessee’s SB 1028 goes much further, defining traditional Islamic law as counter to constitutional principles, and authorizing the state’s attorney general to freeze the assets of organizations that have been determined to be promoting or supporting Sharia. On Monday, CAIR and the ACLU called for lawmakers to defeat the bill.

Yerushalmi has quite the checkered past.  Here’s what I wrote on him following an event in which two Congressional Republicans were presented a report, co-authored by Yerushalmi, on the “threat” sharia law apparently poses to the U.S.:

Yerushalmi has been aptly described as a “Jewish fascist” by blogger Richard Silverstein.  As Silverstein highlighted in August 2007, Yerushalmi has said:

One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one…Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people…What interest does America have in a strong Israel? If your answer is democracy in a liberal or western sense, know you have sided with the Palestinians of Hamas.

Yerushalmi was a member of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, which was instrumental in the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim smear campaign that brought down Debbie Almontaser, the founding principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual-language Arabic school in Brooklyn.  He has followed his Islamophobic buddies Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in joining in their war against the Muslim community center near Ground Zero, and is an attorney with the so-called American Freedom Defense Initiative, which is run by Geller and Spencer.

That’s not even the worst part.  Charles Johnson, the blogger at the formerly right-wing, hawkish website Little Green Footballs who “parted ways with the right” for, in part, its “Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.),” has the rundown on Yerushalmi:

This is a good time for some background information on Pamela Geller’s associate David Yerushalmi, who is an advocate for criminalizing Islam itself and imposing 20-year sentences on practicing Muslims. Yes, really.

He’s not simply anti-Muslim, though; Yerushalmi also wrote a now-infamous article titled “On Race: A Tentative Discussion, Part II,” in which he advocated a return to a pre-Bill of Rights Constitution, and the restriction of voting rights to white male land-owners. Again … yes, really.

Here’s a lengthy article at Talk To Action on the bizarre views and causes of David Yerushalmi: Anti-Semitic White-Supremacist Orthodox Jew Tries To Ban Islam In US.

Yerushalmi has deleted as much evidence of the “On Race” article as he could; he removed it from the Internet Archive and the Google cache, and put his entire website behind a registration wall. But here’s a PDF that contains the full article, and it’s as ugly and twisted a piece of racism as anything I’ve ever seen. Yerushalmi opens by calling Islam “an evil religion,” and “blacks … the most murderous of peoples.”

A quote:

“There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society – the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we ‘know’ it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?”